May 20, 2011

The front-and-center featured article on the NYT today reports that "by the time the children of illegal immigrants reached age 2, they showed significantly lower levels of language and cognitive development than the children of legal immigrants and native-born parents."

... Indeed, a recently published study of the early development of children born to illegal immigrants in New York City suggests that most stories that begin like Eulogia's do not end as well.

Even though the children have citizenship and live in an immigrant-friendly city that offers them a wide array of services, many are still hobbled by serious developmental and educational deficits resulting from their parents' lives in the shadows, according to the study, whose author says it is the most comprehensive look to date at the effects of parents' immigration status on young children.

"The undocumented are viewed in current policy debates as lawbreakers, laborers or victims - seldom as parents raising citizen children," wrote the author, Hirokazu Yoshikawa, a Harvard education professor who has published the study as a book, "Immigrants Raising Citizens" (Russell Sage Foundation, 2011).

Professor Yoshikawa found that by the time the children of illegal immigrants reached age 2, they showed significantly lower levels of language and cognitive development than the children of legal immigrants and native-born parents.

Since age 2 is the first point when you can test language and it's near the lower boundary of when you can test cognitive development in general, I'd say: that's bad, really bad. Translated into Occam-speak, what the NYT is reporting is: At the earliest point at which we can test, illegal immigrants' children are less intelligent on average.

"Millions of the youngest citizens in the United States, simply by virtue of being born to a parent with a particular legal status, have less access to the learning opportunities that are the building blocks of adult productivity," he wrote. ...

Let's reread the crucial clause: "simply by virtue of being born to a parent with a particular legal status." Uh, no.

Poor cognitive development can lead to lower school performance, which in turn can lead to higher dropout rates, an undertrained work force and lower economic productivity.

Indeed.

Therefore, the article suggests, the appropriate response to the relative stupidity of the children of illegal immigrants is granting their parents amnesty.

There's a second cognitive problem that goes unmentioned in this article, but one that might be even more threatening to America's future. A close reading of most illegal immigration-related articles in the New York Times over the last decade reveals that the topic of illegal immigration make the New York Times stupider.

28 comments:

Wes
said...

Yes this is a commentary on the innate intelligence of illegal aliens from Mexico. Does anyone know what the IQ of Mestizos is? I have seen figures on Mexican IQ, but that includes everyone, even the fairly white Mexicans.

What we are getting now is purely Mestizo and indigenous people. Does their IQ get about as low as African American?

I think one of the reasons that the mainstream constantly blames their lower test scores on anything but genetics is that the white elites like the power.

Not just the expanded government (although that goes without saying by now), but also the feeling that every social problem could be solved if only white people would simply give more. Y'know, other white people who are not as enlightened as they are.

A lot of white people like being "Daddy White Man" - it's a way of showing their superiority over other whites and making sure that any non white achievement will have the taint of being because whitey deigned to help them.

So, this was a scrupulously designed study that compared, like, the children of legal immigrant Indian engineering graduates, and the children of Indian engineering graduates who didn't get green cards and just decided to illegally overstay their visas and live here, right? So how could it be bogus? I didn't read the article but I'm sure the study on the deleterious effects of "living in the shadows" was set up more or less like that, right?

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From the article: "Even though the children have citizenship and live in an immigrant-friendly city that offers them a wide array of services, many are still hobbled by serious developmental and educational deficits resulting from their parents' lives in the shadows..."

Obviously these familias need to emerge from the shadows here and go back to sunny Mejico.

Most Mexicans in NYC appear to be all indigenous, with no Caucasian ancestry at all. Illegal aliens in NYC include all types of people though. Many are black Dominicans, Haitians, Jamaicans, Africans etc. but also Chinese, Indians, Arabs, Albanians, Turks, Brazilians etc...

I agree with the Slim Times. We sure don't know how to treat the Sacred Race of Bronze right.

It is all our fault, and since Mexico is prosperous (GDP +4.6%), resource-rich, pro-trade and democratic, the illegals should show us what's what, return to Mexico, and leave our sorry American a--es behind!

white elites like the power...the feeling that every social problem could be solved if only white people would simply give more...

I think there is something to this. There is a desire by our elites to feel like they can overcome the power of genes - basically overcome nature. The ancient Romans probably felt the same way, right before the Barbarians plunged them into a 1,000 year Dark Age.

Very interesting. The New York Times of October 21, 2009 cited a University of California-Berkeley study that said that the children of Hispanic immigrants lag behind most whites in terms of linguistic and cognitive skills at age 2. That article said nothing about the immigrants' legal status. It said that the Hispanic children had not been stimulated enough and that more government spending on preschool programs was necessary.

In summary, the country's liberal elites favor amnesty and more government spending -- no matter what.

I would be curious to see if the children of Asian immigrants, legal and illegal, have been studied for development and educational deficits. My wife teaches kids that are behind in school and in need of some remedial help. She has yet to have an East Asian child in one of those classes.

On a related note, iSteve readers should consider supporting Herman Cain - he's the only announced candidate for whom illegal immigration is a signature issue. Blacks and Whites should be natural allies on this issue. And that guy can give a speech.

"I would be curious to see if the children of Asian immigrants, legal and illegal, have been studied for development and educational deficits."

I can explain this phenomenon from my own empirical research. Many Asians most assuredly have deficits especially in what we might term language disorders but, since most are over achieving conformists, most will manage to stay in the mainstream in American public schools. I have actually observed that there are Asians who can be classified as developmentally delayed. Of course Asians will mostly have IQs between say 80 and 130 which may or may not be indicative of greater inbreeding.

That a motivated Asian with a normal IQ and a learning disability could pass mostly undetected through our oh-so-challenging public schools isn't saying much.

The article seems to be assuming a uni-directional causality>>> That illegal immigration causes low intelligence. Even though it was not a causal study. That is what we call poor scientific writing. Also I do IQ tests all the time and if you are trying to base any cognitive or language outcome on the basis of testing kids two and younger then you really are misunderstanding psychometrics and child development.

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